Moving from Chrome Sign Builder to full digital signage solution
Chrome Sign Builder is a simple solution for anyone who wants to display a Google Presentation (a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation alike) on his/her digital signage screen, using his Chrome OS device. It is a nice tool by Google for beginners. I really liked that when it was released to the Chrome Web Store, back then.
All you need to do is to to publish your Google presentation, install the Chrome Sign Builder and then just choose your published link there. If you want scheduling, you can only set simple schedule, not more than a month ahead and not by recurring days in the week, as it’s done by dragging the mouse over a range of calendar days (which cannot be dragged, unfortunately, beyond the current month). Another known limitation of the Sign Builder is that it cannot play the presentation if the unit is offline (no internet) at the moment of rebooting the unit.
Running the Sign Builder in kiosk mode is much more tricky (we made a couple of experiments till we found the way). First, you would like to have kiosk mode (and here you must have managed by Google Console; no option for non-managed kiosk mode), in case it is supposed to run 24/7 (and I bet that is the case here).
The problem is that once you setup the Sign Builder as the chosen kiosk app, it will automatically start running, when the Chromebox or Chromebit of yours reboots. However, there is no way there to choose the Google Presentation you wish to be displayed (something which you can do, when you run the Sign Builder in desktop mode). So, how the heck do I choose my Google presentation there? Well, on the very same Chrome device which you designated to be the signage device, you need (in desktop mode) to access the Google Device Management Console and then switch to the Sign Builder which you installed on the Desktop mode before - there you will find a link which will open the Google Console in the right page (kiosk settings) and there it will allow you to set the published presentation URL to be displayed. Please notice that if you open the Google Console on another computer, you won’t find these options, even if you already set the Chrome Sign Builder as the chosen kiosk app. After you do that once, every Chrome device which is enrolled under the same OU (organizational unit) will display the same presentation file.
So, isn’t it time to move forward to a complete robust full digital signage solution?
Check our ChromeOS digital signage software and get onboard.
Nir.
